Palm Beach school district weighs tax for teacher salaries

Palm Beach County voters in November may be asked to raise their property taxes so teachers could be paid more, in hopes of keeping them in the classroom.

Under the proposal being pushed by Schools Superintendent Robert Avossa, voters would pay about $25 more per $100,000 of assessed property on their tax bills.

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It is seen as a way to cut high turnover. Avossa said the district loses about 10 percent of teachers a year, when a three to five percent turnover rate would be more acceptable. It’s especially a problem among teachers in their first five years.

“We spend all this money developing them, and then they go to to sell textbooks and double their salaries,” he said.

The plan,which is being discussed by a committee of district and teacher union officials, would provide about $50 million a year to boost teacher salaries. District officials say they don’t yet know how much more money teachers at different experience levels might receive.

It would mark the third time in a decade the school district has asked county voters for a new tax. Last year, voters approved a penny increase in the countywide sales tax, half of which goes to the school district specifically for school repair and upgrades. The district expects to receive $1.3 billion over 10 years from that tax.

In 2010, voters approved a tax of $25 per $100,000 of assessed property to pay for arts teachers. Theyrenewed it 2014. The new proposal would double that to $50, with half going to pay for art and music positions and half going for salary increases.

But there’s a gamble in it. If voters say no, the district would lose the money for the art and music teachers.

Fred Scheibl, co-founder of the Palm Beach County Taxpayer Action Board, questioned whether the district is using its current budget wisely, pointing to Avossa’s $325,000 annual salary and the six-figure salaries of many of his administrators.

“Teachers have been getting a bad deal for quite a while. I think you can trim a lot of fat and give some of that to them,” he said.

District officials argue that state funding controls how much they allocate to teacher salaries.

“Funding has never recovered since the Great Recession, and in the last several years, we’ve been very limited as far as what we can do in terms of raises,” Mike Burke, the district’s chief financial officer said. “If we recognize this as a problem that’s unacceptable, the only outlet for more revenue is to turn to the local voters.”

Avossa said the district pays beginning teachers about $41,000, which he called a good starting salary. But after that, the increases are minuscule, he said.

“Many of the teachers I looked at had been here 15 years and still had not reached $50,000,” he said. “That’s shocking.”

Teachers generally work for 10 months a year. The averageannual salary for workers in all industries Palm Beach County is about $54,000.

Justin Katz, president of the Classroom Teachers Association, said he was hired as a new teacher in 2007, making $36,500. His salary last year teaching high school at Park Vista High in western Boynton Beach was $44,500. He said the district gave little or no raises for several years during the recession.

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“It’s a fundamental problem,” Katz said. “New teachers are making almost as much as those who’ve worked 10 or 15 years. Teachers who have been here for 20 years are only making about $50,000.”